Yes, it came out of the blue a couple of weeks ago by email from someone I did not know. No, her question was not unique. In fact, it seems I am asked the same question on every visit to my longtime vet’s office, and often in the public square: Are you finding a lot of ticks?

Now, let me say I can understand why folks figure that, because my dogs and I routinely patrol off-road habitats with thick cover — traipsing through chest-high hayfields and swampy edges — ticks must be a recurring annoyance. Well, I hate to disappoint but would not rate ticks as a vexing problem in my world. Why? I can’t say for sure. Entomologist I ain’t. But I have thought about the subject often, usually in conversation with friends, readers or people I meet socially. Not only that, but I’m confident I know the answer resulting from simple comparative analysis of habitats visited and the seasonal occurrence of ticks in different cover.

Let me begin by saying I am certain ticks prefer sandy, woody terrain like, for instance, the pine barrens of Montague Plains, where I have never walked for any length of time without finding ticks on my dogs and/or me during snowless months. Another sandy plain along the South Deerfield/Whately line, minus the dense scrub pine and oak of the Montague Plains, produces reduced tick issues but increased occurrence nonetheless.

Plus, never have I removed more ticks from my dogs than after killing frosts during the fall bird-hunting season. That’s when the little buggers seem to most aggressively search out warm bodies, including humans, on which to burrow in and get warm and comfy in moist spots, such as the crevice between your clavicle and neck, armpits and nether regions, where they’re not always easily detectable and can thus linger long enough for Lyme-disease complications to develop.

Also, as I wrote to my latest inquirer, my travels tell me I’m more apt to pick up ticks in woody terrain than in open, fertile, loamy fields, be they hayfields or goldenrod/aster patches on colorful wetland cuffs. On the other hand, move a few feet from these flowered tangles and into alders, sumac, poplar or other bushy, woody swampland, and the possibility of picking up ticks increases dramatically. Same can be said of upland forest from personal observation, which again most often occurs during the fall, in my mind clearly “the season of the tick.” Apparently others differ with my assessment, suggesting spring as the season they find most problematic. And I will admit that I did occasionally pick up ticks during the May turkey-hunting season, when my dogs never accompanied me, removing prime tick targets and guinea pigs.

Thus far this spring, I have seen a total of six ticks, all of them wood ticks that do not as far as I know bring dangerous Lyme Disease into the mix like minuscule deer ticks. Three of those little, creepy, crab-like buggers were detected walking on the back of my hand after morning walks. Another came off my neck after I twice knocked it off my temple with the back of my hand while reading after a shower. Other than that, I pulled one engorged bugger from behind bitch Lily’s left ear one night a couple of weeks ago, and I removed another attached to my cat’s neck more than a month back.

So, despite many opportunities to collect ticks in my travels or by transference from my three pets, I would not consider ticks a problem in the flatlands I patrol.

Before I transition briefly to another pressing subject, just a little gimmick pitch to throw off your timing. Either last year or the year before, probably in April, I took a walk on my colleague’s fertile produce farm less than a mile south and west of the spot where I have walked daily for many years without encountering tick problems. After an hour or so in the field exploring wetland cover, I returned home and, sure enough, pulled two ticks off the back of my hand and another later that day off of dog Chubby.

During that pleasant walk, I ventured maybe 100 yards through a narrow strip of woods hiding a spring brook between fields, broke through the perimeter of wild rose and alders in another spot way out along the back corner at the base of Greenfield Mountain, then went a short distance into the woods at the site of a old dried-up pond, now marsh, where Chubby got jacked up and flushed a couple of whistling spring woodcocks. So, again, same plain yet different types of cover.

I’m convinced that we picked up the ticks in the woods that day, and my colleague concurs. In discussion this week, I asked him how often he picks up ticks working his family’s vegetable plots and hayfields, the hay typically harvested up to three times a year.

His answer?

Never.

’Nough said.

q

In case you missed it, deer hunters participating in the two-week shotgun deer season this year will be able to kill random black bears that cross their path.

All deer-hunting regulations will be in effect except for the use of buckshot, which will not be permitted during a extended slugs-only bear season.

Hunters have for years proposed bear-hunting during deer season like way back when. Now, the state has finally accepted the rule-change I long ago predicted was inevitable as a partial solution to a problematic expanding bear population without ample bear hunters to stabilize it with sufficient annual harvests.

Now, with the burgeoning bear population spilling into pockets of suburban central and eastern Mass. communities, apparently MassWildlife believed it was time to act. The fact is that, with the hunter density greater during deer season (60,000 statewide) than any other time of the year, the new measure will help but not solve the growing bear-population issue.

More will likely have to be done in the not too distant future to maximize the bear harvest in a state where the last population estimate in 2011 was 4,000 to 4,500, with an estimated annual growth rate of eight percent.

Another population assessment is due next year.